Updated October 2026
How many years of records do AI buyers want?
You have been in business for years, but your email, your books and your job software each start at a different date. Most buyers want three or more years of records, and a few ask for four or five. If you have six years in your job software and twelve in email, you clear every floor we found.1,2,3,4,5,6
The floors
What buyers ask for on years
Most buyers want three or more years, counted either as years in business or years of records you own, and a few ask for four or five. Some publish no floor at all, but their price estimates still ask how long you have been going, which suggests they price on it. Floors differ because buyers want enough history to show how your work changes over time, and each one draws that line in a different place.1,2,4,7,3,8,9,5,6,10
| Fact | Value and source |
|---|---|
| Pewter: who qualifies | US firms with 20+ full-time staff now or at peak, 3+ years of records, working mainly in English; operating, downsizing, winding down or closed |
| Who can sell | 20+ US W-2 employees and 3+ years in business |
| Who Ventra's ads name | US companies with 30+ employees and 3+ years of records, including a furniture store owner ad ("Your sales history has a buyer") |
| Clova Data ads | Names Procore and Buildertrend (construction), Clio, Filevine and MyCase (law) and PSA tools (MSPs); "100% de-identified" |
| Supersoniq terms and audience | "No equity, no loans"; "Written offer before anything leaves"; US companies with 50+ employees and 5+ years |
| License My Data (broker) | Takes companies with 30+ employees and 2+ years, or closed companies with 50+ staff at their peak; shares commission per deal |
Counting your years
Years in business is not the same as years of records
Most shops hold history in layers. Email might go back to the day you opened. Your field service or practice software might start the year you switched to it. Old paper job folders and binders sit in a back room. Buyers ask two different things, years in business and years of records, so have both numbers.4,1,2
Write down, per system, the first year it has usable records: email, accounting (QuickBooks, Xero), the CRM, the job or project tool, the ticket queue, shared drives. Buyers name tools such as QuickBooks, Salesforce, HubSpot and Jira, so expect those questions.11,12
Old versus new
Is older history worth more?
Some brokers say so. The AI Data page runs a headline that "Older dispatch data is worth more" and calls an archive an asset, not overhead. Nyne's freight ad pitches years of stored freight data, dispatch logs and load histories. These are sales lines, not price lists.13,14
The precedents point the same way on length. Cielo24 sold 13 years of Slack, Jira and email for what was reported as hundreds of thousands of dollars. Goldmined.ai's testimonial ad says a distribution company owner made $290K licensing 10 years of orders, invoices and supplier emails, which is the broker's own claim.15,16
Our reading, not a buyer quote: length matters most when the records connect. Ten years of quotes tied to the emails that won them and the invoices that followed tell a model how a job runs from start to finish. Ten years of scanned receipts with no context say much less.
Gaps
When a system change wiped your history
If you migrated and the old system is gone, the years in it may be gone too. If the old server is still in a closet, it may hold the oldest and most complete records you have. The Nyne AI page pitches exactly this: get a quote before anything gets wiped. Do not throw out a drive or cancel an old subscription until you know what is on it. Once you have your years per system, the quiz introduces you to the buyers we work with whose floor you clear.17
FAQ
Questions, answered with sources
It does not publish one, but its estimator asks how many years of data you have, alongside employee count and headquarters.8
Every business is different, so this one is best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over it with you before anything is signed.
Before you sign
Questions to talk through with your buyer
Every business is different, so these are best talked through with the buyer you're working with. Their team goes over them with you before anything is signed.
Questions for this kind of business
- Are any of our oldest records under a hold or retention rule that limits copying them?
- Who owns this data: the company, an estate, or someone else?
Questions for any buyer
- Is the license exclusive, and for how long?
- Can you sublicense the data, and to whom?
- Which AI labs will receive it, and will you tell us?
- How long do you keep it, and how is it deleted?
- What is your liability cap, and who indemnifies whom?
- Will the contract ban re-identification of people in the data?
- Who removes personal data, by what method, and do we approve it first?